33.3155, Review: Offensive Language: O’Driscoll (2020)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-3155. Mon Oct 17 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.3155, Review: Offensive Language: O’Driscoll (2020)

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Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2022 15:28:43
From: Sabina Tabacaru [sabina.tabacaru at gmail.com]
Subject: Offensive Language: O’Driscoll (2020)

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-454.html

AUTHOR: Jim  O’Driscoll
TITLE: Offensive Language
SUBTITLE: Taboo, Offence and Social Control
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
YEAR: 2020

REVIEWER: Sabina Tabacaru, Université Paris 8, France

SUMMARY

Part I, “Offensive language and why it matters”, includes two chapters on
introductory remarks and theoretical premises. The two chapters define
offensive language (language that can cause or has caused offense, not
conflict, p. 5), and taboo language (language that can cause offense, p. 5).
The author uses different pragmatic and sociopragmatic theories (i.e., Speech
Act Theory, Grice’s implicature, politeness theory, and the concept of face)
to explain and analyze the role offensive language plays in society.
O’Driscoll also underlines the importance of analyzing offensive language:
people often focus on the fact that it was said rather than on what was said
(p. 9), which means offensive language is frequently left unexamined.
 
Part II, “Potential offence: Taboo language”, includes four chapters on
language, words, reference, and predication. The literature on taboo language
does not often agree on the terminology, which means that the field and its
boundaries are not at all clear. Examples of terms used in the literature so
far go from ‘swearing’ to ‘forbidden words’ (pp. 32-33). The author thus
identifies two types of taboo language: taboo words, which, when uttered, are
considered taboo (for instance, the word ‘prick’), and taboo reference, which
includes topics that are taboo (for example, going to the toilet, p. 42).
Interestingly, such taboo words are often associated with “the lowest
socioeconomic groups” (p. 47) and would be censored in the mass media through
the use of asterisks. O’Driscoll explains why such taboo words are considered
offensive: even though used metaphorically (as they are most of the time),
they imply a certain intimacy/closeness with the audience/hearer(s). Social
rules of politeness imply a certain distance between speakers in certain
contexts, and taboo words in such contexts are considered face-threatening.
Particularly, O’Driscoll calls taboo predication those things that are taboo
in one context but not in another (for example, in 2017, a Google memo
circulated that made claims about male and female biological differences as an
explanation for gender disparity in the tech industry). 

In Part III, “Actual offence: Case studies”, the author first presents some
theoretical background for different concepts to be dealt with in the
following chapters: speech acts theory (for threats, for instance),
technology-mediated communication, and non-seriousness. The following chapters
analyze examples of offenses: against a person (words such as ‘bastard’ or
‘crap’ being used in email exchanges), offenses against ‘the peace’
(generally, calls for violence), threats to social harmony (this includes
Enoch Powell’s speech about immigration, and offensive jokes in the
workplace). O’Driscoll makes the connection between different interactions
presented here and banter. One such example deals with a Twitter joke gone too
far where the author of the tweet was prosecuted for having issued a terrorist
threat against the airport in South Yorkshire, England for “sending a public
electronic message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or
menacing character contrary to the Communication Act 2003” (p. 121). 

In Part IV, “Reprise”, the author talks about the way offensive language is
reported in the media and ends with a chapter on social control and free
speech (p. 163). Language, the author underlines, is linked to power because
some of the examples presented in this book represent “the powerful
sanctioning the social behavior of the less powerful” (p. 163). He thus
focuses on social control from two perspectives: taboo-ification (relating to
transgressive language) and public-ization (relating to polite social norms). 

EVALUATION

O’Driscoll’s book deals with a very complex and difficult topic. Yet, the
topic is fundamental nowadays. The theoretical framework of the book
encompasses notions from pragmatics (im/politeness, speech acts, implicature),
but the topic in itself has a much broader scope. One of the questions
underlined by O’Driscoll in the last chapter is the social control of language
and the fact that some politicians (for instance, Donald Trump) are seen in a
positive light precisely because they break taboos (p. 166) – because they
break the rules that people see as having being imposed on them. Even what is
supposed to be “politically correct” language is instrumentalized for social
control. 

The examples encompass different situations, ranging from racism and sexism to
personal email exchanges and personal stories from the author himself. Some
instances are taken from the media and the author goes through lengthy
analyses of what was said in a specific context to explain why they matter.
This makes the book interesting for any pragmatic and discourse analysis
class, as a resource for students and instructors to debate and discuss the
examples presented. 

The book does not present a corpus-based approach, and this would be very hard
to compile given the different perspectives proposed in the book. The
instances presented follow a logic in the development of the author’s ideas
and make sense given the framework followed. It is emphasized that what is
offensive to someone is highly subjective; not only words can be offensive but
whole contexts as well (the whole context in which such a word/phrase was
used, but also the medium through which it was transmitted). The author also
makes different connections to non-seriousness, particularly for
technology-mediated communication where the hearers would not have access to
the speaker’s emotions. It is hence much easier to misunderstand a message
sent online than something said in a particular way in face-to-face
conversation. What is highly relevant for this book is the way free speech and
social control are linked to the way language is used and/or policed.
 
To sum up, I think this is a fundamental topic that allows us to see the
importance language has in society in general. What exactly offends us and
why? Who has social control and why? Is offensive language a matter of free
speech? O’Driscoll definitely makes us think not only about the how, but also
about the why, and I think that is what makes the book thought-provoking for
students of linguistics and anyone interested in language in general.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Sabina Tabacaru is Associate Professor of Linguistics at Université Paris 8 
Vincennes-Saint-Denis. Her research interests include sarcasm, discourse
analysis, gender, multimodality, and emotion from the perspective of Cognitive
Linguistics.





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